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Each element of the production works seamlessly to create a grand, overarching vision of a fairy-tale world.

Guillaume Côté and Heather Ogden beautifully complement one another in the National Ballet's Swan Lake. (DAVID COOPER)

By Catherine KustanczySpecial to the Star

Fri., June 16, 2017

Swan Lake

National Ballet of Canada. Choreography by James Kudelka. Until June 25 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. W. national.ballet.ca or 416-345-9595

The National Ballet of Canada’s Swan Lake is a visual and sonic feast of delights, with beautiful dancing, a sumptuous design sense and outstanding orchestral work.

It tells the story of Siegfried (Guillaume Côté), a prince who feels isolated from courtly life and falls in love with Odette (Heather Ogden), a swan, before being tricked by the evil Rothbart (Piotr Stanczyk) and having his kingdom destroyed.

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Each element within the production (first presented by the National Ballet in 1999) works seamlessly to create a grand, overarching vision of a fairy-tale world, with music, dance and design equal treats.

James Kudelka’s character-rich choreography demonstrates a deep, intrinsic understanding — nay, love — of Tchaikovsky’s score, and its relationship with theatre and movement. For instance, an ensemble scene near the end of the first act features the dancers portraying the swans, with cocked arms and bent necks, in imitation of the birds. More than being merely imitative, the dancers’ hands, faces, even eyebrows (if you’re close enough) convey character, movement, theme.

Kudelka’s choreography is also deeply enmeshed with Santo Loquasto’s enchanting sets and costumes. The heavy velvets and velours of the opening contrast sharply with the icy whites and blue hues of the swan world. Choreography moves from stately to swaying, with hints of a forthcoming menace.

The flowing periwinkle and gold robes featured in the opening of the second act work beautifully with Kudelka’s grandly swirling choreography. A lavish world is created via Robert Thomson’s dramatic lighting and Loquasto’s panoply of vibrant costumes (particularly those of the princesses), though a fascinating, claustrophobic-styled blocking, together with the heavy design sense, also foreshadows this world’s eventual demise.

In an elegantly simple if effective piece of design, a single, gigantic sheet is used to convey the immense storm that destroys the court and it’s in this scene that one most clearly experiences the National Ballet’s magical marriage of music, dance and design. The scene is both gripping and truly heartbreaking.

Principal dancer Côté poetically captures Siegfried’s triumph and torment. He and real-life wife Ogden (also a principal dancer) beautifully complement one another, not through any striking contrasts but through an innate parity of athleticism, theatricality and dynamism that allows them to move as one, artfully expressing the complexities of Tchaikovsky’s score as well as the human connections that lie beneath the fairy tale.

While Côté and Ogden are notable for their similarities here, first soloist Robert Stephen (the Fool) and principal dancer Naoya Ebe (Benno) are memorable for their striking stylistic contrasts. While Stephen is muscular and earthy in his approach, Ebe is wiry and ethereal. Together with a supple and precise performance by first soloist Tanya Howard as the Wench (her pointe work is truly lovely), they make for an eminently watchable group that greatly enriches the magical atmosphere.

The performers are vigorously supported by a strong National Ballet Orchestra, led by music director David Briskin, who teases out the rhythmic qualities of the score with grace and style but cleverly underlines the aggression in certain passages with winds and percussion for focus and drama.

Just as The Nutcracker is a wonderful winter introduction to the ballet, Swan Lake is perfect for summer. Along with several wide-eyed children in the audience on opening night, there were many entranced adults who, by the evening’s close, were converts to the delights of the art form.

This story has been edited from a previous version that said Robert Stephen was a principal dancer.

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